Me and Jenny, twinklin' like crystal and pennies (Carly Simon)

Wie geht's?

A recent article that I bookmarked on platonic male friendships asked the rhetorical question: ever feel like you were fated to be friends with someone?

Well yes, I have.

At school, once in a year group you hardly ever knew kids in the year above or below. It's the way it goes when students are groups according to age. Maybe this silo-ing of friendship groups still happens.

In The Beatles the age range between John/Paul/George was three years. John was two years older than Paul, three years older than George. That combo only happened because Paul was introduced to John by a friend, and Paul and George were school friends, otherwise John wouldn't normally meet George. Ringo came along later. Fate.

At M.A.G.S., in my first School Certificate year (a.k.a. 5th form or Year 11 in new money) I was in class with boys of my year like Mike Budd, Vernon Kingstone and Peter Cahill who had failed School C the year before and had to repeat the year - that's how I met Loo Loo's brother Brian who was a year older than me.

In turn, when I failed School C, boys in the year below me caught up with me - that's how I met Greg Knowles. Fate.

So, unusually, my friendship group was spread over three years thanks to my ineptitude a sitting School C and the way M.A.G.S. organised their classes. 

While looking at Facebook posts by guys following M.A.G.S's 100 year anniversary, I was again reminded of this friendship phenomenon. I recognised very few boys in the other years beyond that three year spread. 

That phrase about brothers from different mothers really applies to Greg and me - our shared history and thoughts about music so closely align that I'm sure Kevy things we sneak a peak at each other's reviews before we hit publish.

At Auckland University, Greg and I fortuitiously met a different bunch of people (Loo Loo was the conduit), some of whom have become life-long amigos. As a consequence K Simms, G Knowles, L Wood and I have had an easy friendship for well over 40 something years now.  

That article included an analysis of the writer's male friendship group that largely resonated with our own three male amigo interactions:

A substantial amount of my interaction with male friends involves talking shit with one another: jokes, fake insults, gossip, arguments about songs. This might seem impersonal, unemotional, but in fact the digs that Sean and I deliver to each other are based on the particulars of decades of playful banter; each fresh debate with Ehren about a new album advances a conversation we’ve been engaged in since 1994. And interspersed with these rituals are real revelations about our own lives, our partners, our dreams, our families.

There you go. Fate.

Love and peace - Wozza